Techland Releases a Dying Light Co-Op Demo a Half Year after Release

Still breathing life seven months well after its release is Dying Light. An entire expansion heads next month to Techland’s latest, and the developer wishes to spur up interest again with a free demo of Dying Light. Three hours of unique content in the Slums area complete with the standard four-player, online co-op is what to expect from the demo out now. Day/night cycle, parkour, crafting, quests, and everything else that made Dying Light the five million dollar hit lands for free for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

The decision to pour resources into a free trial was a nostalgic one. Producer Tymon Smektala and Techland thought demos are a lost art this generation and felt the need to stoke the fire.

“With the demand for Dying Light still high after more than half a year on the market, we wondered what else we could do to help players decide which game to buy…Then we thought: demoes were pretty much a standard in the previous generation, but suddenly they’ve become few and far between. So we decided to use some of our resources to release a demo now and let everyone experience our game first-hand.”

Given the expensive development costs for this generation, demos play second fiddle to the polish and feature tweaking required for a modern open-world game, though some have a rougher time figuring it out. Most developers it seems like can’t validate a production of a free product for the fence sitters and the jaded. And yet, Free stuff is free stuff, can’t complain here. Has there been a game you played the demo of months after its initial release?